Owen Polley

​In the News Letter last week, the think-tanker Roderick Crawford urged unionists to break out of the “echo chamber of self-pity” over the Windsor Framework.

​​During the DUP’s boycott of the executive, we were told repeatedly that it was overwhelmingly important to get Stormont back. Its return was portrayed as a solution to all kinds of problems and, for many politicians and commentators, devolution became the yardstick of whether Northern Ireland ‘worked’.

​​The Labour Party’s first budget for 14 years was leaked so heavily that some MPs felt there was little point listening to Rachel Reeves’ speech last Wednesday. The House of Commons’ speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, accused the chancellor of showing “supreme discourtesy” to her colleagues, by announcing important policies to, among others, TV interviewers in the US.

​Last week, the Conservative Party’s choice of leader was quickly pushed off the front pages by the US election result. Ultimately though, the Tory leadership contest is likely to have a far greater effect on local people’s lives.

A t the cenotaph in Belfast on Sunday, members of the armed forces gathered as usual alongside the Northern Irish public, to remember the war dead, as well as service-people killed in more recent conflicts.

Fighting Ulster's flag downgrade I f Commonwealth Games mandarins in Northern Ireland get their way, the province will not compete under

Despite an incorrect exit poll, Sinn Fein was the obvious loser at the Irish election Sinn Fein's campaign for a poll on a ‘united Ireland’ has stalled

​Tomorrow, the Assembly is expected to vote to extend the Windsor Framework that has brought so much disruption and political instability to Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Assembly is set to vote to maintain the Windsor Framework Labour seem indifferent to Northern Ireland's place in the Union

The party that claimed to stand up for unionists capitulated at every turn